Gandhi and AnarchySankaran Nair, C. (Chettur), Sir
History
Gandhi and Anarchy
Sankaran Nair, C. (Chettur), Sir
Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948 -- Political and social views; India -- Politics and government -- 1919-1947
Khilafat Raj, and the one hope of the masses is in its crushing by the
strong arm of the Government. Mr. Gandhi asks the Moderates to compel
the Government to suspend hostilities, _i.e._, to let loose the wolves
to destroy what lives are left. The sympathy of the Moderates is not, I
make bold to say, with the murderers, the looters, the ravishers, who
have put into practice the teachings of paralysing the Government of the
N.C.O.'s, who have made "war on the Government" in their own way. How
does Mr. Gandhi like the Mopla spirit, as shown by one of the prisoners
in the Hospital, who was dying from the results of asphyxiation? He
asked the surgeon, if he was going to die, and surgeon answered that he
feared he would not recover. "Well, I'm glad I killed fourteen
infidels," said the Brave, God-fearing Mopla, whom Mr. Gandhi so much
admires, who "are fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a
manner they consider as religious." Men who consider it "religious" to
murder, rape, loot, to kill women and little children, cutting down
whole families, have to be put under restraint in any civilised society.
Mr. Gandhi was shocked when some Parsi ladies had their saries torn off,
and very properly, yet the God-fearing hooligans had been taught that it
was sinful to wear foreign cloth, and doubtless felt they were doing a
religious act; can he not feel a little sympathy for thousands of women
left with only rags, driven from home, for little children born of the
flying mothers on roads in refuge camps? The misery is beyond
description. Girl wives, pretty and sweet, with eyes half blind with
weeping, distraught with terror; women who have seen their husbands
hacked to pieces before their eye, in the way "Moplas consider as
religious"; old women tottering, whose faces become written with anguish
and who cry at a gentle touch and a kind look waking out of a stupor of
misery only to weep, men who have lost all, hopeless, crushed,
desperate, I have walked among thousands of them in the refugee camps,
and some times heavy eyes would lift as a cloth was laid gently on the
bare shoulder, and a faint watery smile of surprise would make the face
even more piteous than the stupor. Eyes full of appeal, of agonised
despair, of hopeless entreaty of helpless anguish, thousands of them
camp after camp, "Shameful inhumanity proceeding in Malabar," says Mr.
Gandhi. Shameful inhumanity indeed, wrought by the Moplas, and these are
the victims, saved from extermination by British and Indian swords, For
be it remembered the Moplas began the whole horrible business; the
Government intervened to save their victims and these thousands have
been saved. Mr. Gandhi would have hostilities suspended--so that the
Moplas may sweep down on the refugee camps, and finish their work?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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